Studies and research have been undertaken to determine the efficacy of personal care products. For example, in the context of feminine hygiene products, research has been performed to determine the effectiveness of the products in absorbing fluid.
The quality of the results that are obtained in connection with the research are influenced by the quality of the test system, apparatus, and methodology that are used. For example, due to the complexity of the imaging technology (e.g., computed tomography (CT) scanning) that is used as well as variations in the products/samples that are being analyzed, it is difficult to determine a grayscale value that best represent those volumetric pixels (voxels) of reconstructed data sets that correspond to fluid entering a given sample. In the context of medical imaging, CT scans can be low resolution and fail to recreate real-time conditions despite successive scans or a series of scans. Further still, in vivo set-ups can be costly and require significant amounts of time to, inter alia, organizing subject populations, creating a test protocol, scheduling the scans and analyzing the results. Accordingly, there is uncertainty that is introduced that is difficult, if not impossible, to account for. Furthermore, due to delays between the capturing of the image and when the associated data set becomes available, events such as an advancement of a fluid-front in association with the sample may be missed or unaccounted for.